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Guide: How to Prepare 100s of Photos for Use Online in Photoshop

Saving Images effectively for the web can be a time-consuming task. Each image needs to be resized and colour modes need to be changed. File size and quality checking need to be taken care of too.

Fortunately, with Photoshop, you can speed up this process by batch editing a series of photos. Follow these simple steps to prepare your images quickly.

Step 1

To take full advantage of batch processing, make sure all your photos are in one folder and clearly labelled. In addition, create another folder inside called “edits”.

Step 2

Open Photoshop, then open up any file from the folder you created in Step 1.

Step 3

We are now going to make an Action, which can be applied to all of the images and used in our batch process.

To do this, open the Actions Panel, and click on the “create new action” icon at the bottom right of the panel. Name your Action in the pop-up window, then click record. This will set Photoshop to record every action you make on the image.

Step 4

While in the recording phase, you want to take the following steps:

Go to: Image > Image size. Set the width to 1000 px. This is normally wide enough for web use. The resolution set to 72.

Go to: Image > Mode > and set to RGB Color - make sure 8 bits/channel is also ticked.

Finally go to: File > Export > save for web (legacy) and set the options to your preferences. Use the quality slider in jpeg format to find your preferred level. The bottom image box shows you what the quality will look like, as well as the final file size. The lower the quality, the lower the file size.

Hit save. Then hit stop on the action (bottom of the actions panel).

Step 5

We will now set up the batch process. This script allows Photoshop to run your action across hundreds of images, without you having to open, edit and save every image.

To set this up...

- Go to: File > automate > Batch

- In the pop up window: Go to Action, then select the action you just made, from the drop-down menu.

- Choose the source as Folder

- Click choose, and navigate to the folder you made with all of your images in.

- Make sure destination is set to folder

- Click choose, and navigate to your “edits” folder you made back in step 1.

- Make sure “Override Action “Save As” Commands” is ticked (this means the file will only save, if the step is recorded in your Action)

- Select your document name if you want to change it (its helpful to have your images clearly labelled)

Once this is all setup, click OK. This will start your action running over all of your images. Once it is finished, a box will appear saying it is successful.

You can now check your images, and view them all in the “edits” folder.

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